40% of 911 dialed numbers are pocket calls!

Accidental 911 calls from your butt!

Have you ever received a call or had a one-minute message on your cell with random sounds and jumbling noises? You could even sometimes hear in the distance the person who called you and you just said, "Oh, the phone in the pocket is calling me, it's a pocket call!"

In fact, more and more calls are made accidentally from unlocked cell phones, we call it pocket or butt calls, because our cells are often found in our pockets or purses. Unfortunately, many of these are 911 calls.

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Many studies estimate almost 40% of calls received by the 911 service in Canada are not real emergencies. Most of them are made from smartphones located in a pocket or handbag without the owner noticing. These accidental calls to 911 significantly decrease the availability of resources and may delay vital relief to be taken to people in emergency situations.

Besides, should you call 911 by mistake, please do not panic and hang up, it is important to explain the operator that you do not need help. Indeed, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of Prince Edward Island and British-Columbia are very active and have launched a campaign about it. They actually observed over a period of two weeks that they had spent more than 110 hours, or 8 hours a day, trying to identify the authenticity of anonymous calls. Not to mention the countless hours spent patrolling unnecessarily to answer them.

A few basic precautions to prevent accidental calls is to make sure that 911 is not registered as a speed dial number on your phone and that your screen or keypad is locked with a password before placing your phone in your pocket or purse. The 911 staff loses precious time dealing with these pocket calls.

Another small tip, you should know that Cimpl can identify and calculate these calls very simply. This information can be helpful to raise awareness to your employees, these incidents may seem trivial and yet bring on serious consequences. In this situation, Cimpl's telecom expense management platform becomes a prevention tool, another skill it has added to its numerous qualities!